It is quite plausible that the Next Big Thing will merely be a new use for current technology (information or otherwise). After all, the "internet" was certainly the Next Big Thing, but the real economic benefits came from the creative people who figured out how to use it to make money.
Will we watch a movie 30 years from now and laugh when a young man is told the future is in "computers", just as we laugh now when Dustin Hoffman is told about "plastics" in The Graduate? I mean, are we so centered on IT as the boom industry that we fail to see opportunities elsewhere?
Like I said, it might be a revolutionary new form of grocery bagging.
After all, the "internet" was certainly the Next Big Thing, but the real economic benefits came from the creative people who figured out how to use it to make money.
Now this comment is so far from reality that I just have to laugh.
Take Amazon, for instance. You think their success is just due to some managers scheduling meetings and pushing buttons in some VisualBasic application? You know how many software engineers have pulled allnighters and given up weekends to make Amazon succeed? You think Amazon could have just contracted that all 'unnecessary' technical stuff to Bangladesh?
And at what point do the now booming technology industries in India and China realize that they've reached critical mass, where they have all the skilled workers and sharp minds they need to be the source of the innovations as well?